I don’t know, maybe someone could look a woman like this in the eye right off the bat. But it would be a braver person than me.

I wasn’t twenty feet in—just past where Rod could see me through the trees—and she appeared. Not a sound, mind you. Not a twig breaking to warn me. Stealth personified. She’s wild, too. I mean, like, really wild. Like she was born wild. Now she’s sniffing me like an animal. I’m too weirded out to put out my hands, to do anything but wait in my soaking wet pants, trying not to pee them.

I look at the ground while she looks at me. From the glimpse I did get of her face, she doesn’t look like Anna at all. Darker skinned, for one thing. And she’s much, much shorter. Her hair is a mess, matted down in places like there’s gum stuck in it, so that it look even more crazy than I wear mine. To top it off, she smells like goats cheese. Old, moldy, just-throw-it-out-won’t-you-PLEASE goats cheese. Read the rest of this entry

Chapter One

Today, the old lady is going to talk. I just know it. I woke up knowing it. It could be desperation on my part, given how Scottie, my tabby cat, is as weak as I’ve seen her. But I don’t think so. I think Mrs. Anna Bayless really is going to give me enough information to find…whatever it is she has been trying to tell me I have to find, if I want to save Scottie.

I’m nervous as I reach for the buzzer at the main door. I shouldn’t be. After all, I’ve spent a lot of my life in old folks homes. The internationally recognized Sun Heritage Village community was probably my first babysitter. Exactly when it was that I started babysitting the old folks, instead of the other way around, is hard to say. It was a gradual thing that nobody really noticed. Read the rest of this entry

This video talks–or rather stories–about writing for the MC. Is it so different than writing a novel? Good ideas here!

An exceptional storyteller just doing what he wanted to do, and then sharing it… what story are you telling today?

People probably think I don’t think much, because I don’t talk much. But they would be wrong. So very, very wrong. I think about everything, from every angle, over and over again until it’s like I’ve eaten three meals at once and would practically want to barf my brains out—if I could only get myself to move. I feel like that now, waiting for Rod, watching the rain through the screened in breezeway that attaches the main house to the six-car garage, wondering if the water will be too high to get across to the land Anna says her sister lives on.

Anna. That’s the big mind jam. Ever since leaving her in what now feels like an abysmally lifeless nursing home room, with her playing  out her hidden identity (dulled eyes, slumped back, and mumbling nonsense like a pro), I’ve been Rubik’s-cubing my brain to try to make sense of each and every aspect of what she said, including what she didn’t say. Read the rest of this entry